


the gallow tree

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, In Medias Res, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 20:10:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6624505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theon makes one mistake, and then another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the gallow tree

**Author's Note:**

> various things implied or featured but not prominently enough to merit tags: underage drinking + alcohol abuse, underage sexuality, nonsexual child abuse, isolation/dependence in the context of abuse, intentional triggering, nonspecific criminal activities on the boltons' part and one very large one on theon's. there is a nonconsensual sex scene. it is short and unerotic and theon dissociates through it. ramsay is not an only child, but theon thinks he is. unsure if i will continue this but it was cathartic to write.

In November, Theon moves in with Ramsay.

It's the back-end of fall, just about, and already that trademark Winterfell _dark_ is ushering itself in; the whole thing is a harried, late-night affair, but Ramsay doesn't complain. Ramsay doesn't ask why he's there, either, trembling on the doorstep, old boots and holes in his shirt, white-knuckled and strung-out. Ramsay knows, he thinks. Everyone knows. It's a big town, but not big enough. He has nothing but his phone and his pills and he sleeps, that night, the first night, swallowed up in one of Ramsay's coats on the couch, breathless and sweating, fitful like with a fever.

("Please," he'd said, when Ramsay had opened the door — soft, tremulous, weak like he has not heard himself in years. He does not forget this.)

* * *

The Bolton manor is a sprawling place, and, to Theon's tentative relief, mostly empty. There are a frankly unreasonable number of uninhabited rooms, one of which he finds himself fast set up in, a stone's throw down the hall from Ramsay's own; _oh_ , Ramsay says when Theon protests, swears, a little ashamed, by the sofa, _I really insist_. The bedsheets are paper-crisp and smelling faintly of lemon by the time Theon gets to them. If it were anyone at all but Ramsay, Theon might wonder if he was lonely — but it _is_ Ramsay, Ramsay Bolton, only child, motherless son, his father's to the bone, and Theon does not doubt for a moment that everything here is the way it is solely because that is the way Ramsay wants it. (It is a long time still before Theon will begin to think Ramsay truly fits a hollow home, the way a blade becomes a sheath, always with a quiet and terrible sharpness in unveiling himself; later even than that, he will think that Ramsay is one with this house, that it breathes and creaks and swells with him, grows and grows, never stops, the old-wood center of the world, the no-man's court he has bore his neck to. _Therefore_ _they shall eat of the fruit of their own way_ — there is nothing to be done about it.)

Today, Ramsay is sitting across the kitchen table from him, coffee cradled in one hand, cigarette half to the butt, smiling all loose and toothy. In some tiresome, unsentimental way, it reminds Theon of home. _Home before the Starks_ : maybe the best thing he has to think of, now. "Well," Ramsay says, "I suppose you're not exactly here because you want to be."

Theon's gut clenches tight as a fist. Here it is, he thinks, the interrogation; he couldn't rationally have expected there to be none. Of course Ramsay would go about it with a grin like that. "That's — it's not —"

"Oh, settle down. A little friendly observation, Greyjoy." Ramsay is maybe the most archaic young man Theon has ever known. Family, he supposes, it all comes back to that; there's old blood in Winterfell, and old money, too. For a moment Theon pictures Ramsay's bony, flat-mouthed father, all in place at this very table, fingers drumming a dirge to the tune of _the family, Ramsay —_ _do it for the family_. It makes Theon's mouth feel conspicuously dry. Ramsay takes a drag on his cigarette, lets the smoke hiss out between his teeth, placid as mist. "I'm not here to judge you, you know. I like to think I could at least be trusted to be a last resort. Really, I'm _glad_ you came to me. Warms my heart."

Theon hesitates. Get it out, he thinks. Out, out, out, as though that could make it better. "I'm here because —"

"I _know_ , Theon," Ramsay says, leaning in across the table; his teeth shine, almost the sickly browning-white of bone. "I watch the fucking news."

* * *

He doesn't remember how he met Ramsay. He imagines somehow that he should — that it should be some terrible, monumental _event_ , the first step of a near-historic downward spiral. There are the contexts a man like Ramsay will generally find himself confined to, after all, and they're sticklers for tradition every which way up north.

They met young, Theon thinks, before he moved, before he left the sea. He at least knows this. He was already on his way down, then; he was born falling. In the long run, meeting Robb had barely stalled him. _Did you do it_? he hears again, an echo of Ramsay, festering in his brain. When all was said and all arrangements settled he'd made for bed again, but Ramsay had caught him on the stairs, hand on the crook of his elbow, one last thing, almost an afterthought —  _did you really? Tell me truthful_. His voice had been so low, so quiet, nearly tender.

 _I don't know_ , Theon had said after a moment, and then _maybe_ , and then, _I think so._

Ramsay had smiled again, laughed, just a little. His eyes glittered. _Well, now — I thought after all this time you might've ended up another one of those goody-two-shoes Starks, but I guess that's not the case, is it?_

 _No_ , Theon remembers saying, remembers breathing in hard, after that, feeling his lungs contract as though vacuum-sealed, packed in plastic, _no, I guess not._

* * *

It's late when he wakes, but still he doesn't feel rested; he hasn't in days. He almost wonders if he never will again, if the bags beneath his eyes and the sallow tint to his skin are permanent fixtures, now. His bones ache, old as stone, maybe heavier. The door's open, and he can see a thin streak of light dragged out across the hallway floor — from Ramsay's room, he thinks, blearily. Ramsay was always a night person. He remembers when he used to bring Ramsay home, the few times they'd lie down together on Theon's little bed in the loft, mattress gasping below his back, the thick, sickly heat of beer in his stomach, Ramsay's fingers dancing a clumsy path through the web of his bruises; more than any of this, he remembers discomfort, every single time, no matter how hard he tried to swallow it down. _Sorry_ , he hears himself saying, hazy like through water, _sorry, let me just — I'm not — I have to lie down_. Ramsay would see himself out, at some point during the night. He would wake alone, and always thankful for it.

There's a noise, drifting down the hall: like breathing, Theon thinks, thin and ragged. Somehow, the sound of it makes him itch. He rolls over and curls an arm around himself, falls back into sleep, so fast he barely feels it happen.

( _just like home_ , he thinks, eyelids fluttering, a head full of fog, _just like —_

_I'm sorry, I didn't — I don't —)_

* * *

The questions continue, but very few, at least, cut quite so deep as the first; more than anything, Ramsay simply seems to want to catch up. It's hardly unexpected, Theon supposes, but the sincerity of it leaves him lost. In the morning, Ramsay works, or something like it, and each evening he comes home —

 _is that it, now_? _Theon thinks, some days later, cracking open a window, listening to it squeal, the slow, torturous friction of condensation_ : home? _Would you give the word to anything at all that let itself have you? Would you be a sharp-smiling housewife for anyone? would you —_

and collapses onto the couch, whistles for Theon, sweet as cream: _honey, I'm home_! Every day, Theon waits for this, and every day he watches Ramsay unload dinner from a menagerie of plastic bags and containers, hands softened from the cold, a pale, inviting pink. There is a sense of it being both familiar and utterly unreal. He wonders, quietly, as though he is afraid for God himself to hear, if Ramsay has changed; all the same, he does not ask if Ramsay is seeing anyone, or what he does with himself, or where his father is, or really anything at all. Ramsay asks enough of these things for the both of them. _The Starks, you stayed with them? How long? How is your family? Ah — that's awful — really, just — well, you know I never liked that old shit. Here, sit up. No, here, with me. There's no need to play the guest — we're friends, aren't we?_

Ramsay's hands are warm, by the time Theon comes up onto the couch; one of them brushes the back of his wrist as Ramsay reaches down to spear his chopsticks into a hunk of chicken, stands them straight up, as though he were pinning an insect to corkboard. They clean up together, and after this, Ramsay goes to bed. His sleep pattern is shockingly close to diurnal. Theon's, more often than not, leaves him stretched out downstairs 'til the early hours, lulled into catatonia by a slow, unsettling rhythm of infomercials, foreign cartoons, scrambled pornography — the news channels, he skips past with painful emphasis. He considers asking Ramsay if there is a computer he can use, or books he can read, or anything at all to do while stuck and stagnating, but he at least never complains.

There are two certainties to Theon, at this time: one, that the outside world, for better or for worse, has continued seamlessly without him, closed up over his absence, like the skin around a wound; two, that he is standing on quicksand.

* * *

That second feeling comes to a head, in very little time.

Theon is, of all things, brushing his teeth, when Ramsay gets him — really gets him, just like Theon knew he would. It's early, and he hasn't slept. Ramsay's in the bathroom with him, bearing an undershirt and tousled hair, slack jeans, the line of his jaw dark and tense; Theon finds himself filled with a sort of murderous intent for whatever possessed him to get ready for bed in his underwear. This is the last thing he thinks before he turns back to the sink, half-drooling, almost at peace with his vulnerability, or at least aware of it, so aware that he does not even jump when Ramsay comes up behind him and catches him by the hip. _Of course_ , he thinks, and clutches the rim of the sink with one hand, the movement feeling impossibly slow, heavy yet tender, dreamlike: _of course._

It's all very unceremonious, after that. The panic sets in, delayed by exhaustion, as Ramsay's thumb slots into the hollow of his hipbone. His toothbrush drops into the sink with a sickening clatter. "Been two weeks," Ramsay mumbles, breath almost in his ear, head almost on his shoulder; gooseflesh blossoms down the line of Theon's spine. "Don't you want —"

"No," Theon says, as measured as he can. His tongue feels too large for his mouth, sugar-coated, thick with saliva. "No, I — whatever you're offering, I really don't —"

" _Whatever I'm offering_ ," Ramsay repeats, voice cracking with an obvious smile, "Christ, Theon, don't try to act like you —"

Theon's feet stutter on the tiles as he turns; Ramsay's hand slips away, slow and effortless, like a shedding of skin. Something in the laziness of his grip only hastens Theon's understanding that he has long since lost. "I _don't_ ," he says, regardless. Ramsay is grinning just as he imagined — thin and crooked, pointed like a twitch, or a tic. Theon imagines they will pack Ramsay up into his coffin wearing that face. "I have — Ramsay, I have —"

"You don't have a goddamn thing," Ramsay says, soft as lambswool: a cotton-swab sting. There is exceptionally little cruelty in it. _The kindest cut_ , Theon thinks. Ramsay's backing up to perch on the edge of the bath, now, legs spread, hands hanging down between his thighs; it occurs to Theon that it seems very much like he could leave.

He does not. Ramsay reaches for his wrist, and Theon lets him; his thumb strokes slow, ominous circles over the bump of Theon's bone. "They're still talking about you," Ramsay says, "in the papers."

"Ah," Theon says. Gently, as though he were guiding along a child, Ramsay reels him in. His hand flits from Theon's arm to the small of his back. There is a feeling to it like Theon is about to be led into a dance; his face almost breaks into a strange, sickly smile at the thought, but the brush of Ramsay's knee against his thigh stifles him. Another thought comes to him, more plausible — that Ramsay is expecting Theon to sit on his lap. This one, he almost laughs at. His stomach bubbles with a high-strung nausea, sour, fruitless. Ramsay places his other hand just above the line of Theon's underwear, pushes up his shirt, fingers splayed; his nails, Theon notes, are impeccably trimmed.

"I only want you to stop thinking about it. God knows —" Ramsay pulls Theon's hem up past his ribs, dips his head forward, as though he means to kiss the skin he's unearthed; his breath is hot on Theon's navel. Theon cannot see his eyes. "They won't forget, Theon. They're not going to forget what you did."

He thumbs down Theon's waistband, slow and precise, like he is running his finger along the string of a violin. Theon, despite everything, feels his cock twitch — perfectly Pavlovian. "The Stark boy certainly won't," Ramsay says, and only then, when Theon begins to shiver in earnest, breath drawn, does Ramsay jack him off. He has a deft, tender touch, surprisingly so, but all the same, Theon feels like his orgasm has been wrung out of him; he spills into Ramsay's hand, or supposes that he does, that he must. His head feels thick with fog, a cold, murky grey, ice over water.

Ramsay kisses him when it's done, soft in his unyielding way, a mouthful of sweet-meat. He leaves for work, and Theon, everything dishevelled, watches him go — watches him wash his hands, and before that, watches him lick one, fingers against his teeth, seed-sticky: white on rotten white.

* * *

_They won't forget — they won't forget — they won't —_

That evening, Theon dreams of, in no particular order: being born out of smoke, raw and shivering; running, bare-legged, down a silent road, every puddle burning to the touch; lights flashing in his eyes, gold and red, bright as the sun upon the sea; Robb's voice, breathless, hard like he has never heard it —  _you don't have a goddamn thing._

* * *

"There was a picture of you," Ramsay says, over dinner. His lips shine, thick with grease, obscene. Theon eats as much as he can stomach, which turns out to be very little at all. "Just so you know — not like you'll be going out, any time soon, but —"

They cut and dye Theon's hair, the next day; afterwards, Ramsay fellates him, hands creeping up Theon's waist, blackened as with ash.


End file.
